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These traveling Fools like to share their foreign country medical experiences with their readers, because they believe it gives firsthand insight into what goes on abroad.

Lately here in Mexico, I (Akaisha here) have been spending a good deal of time at the ophthalmologist's office having tests done on my eyes. This is something I find to be less than comfortable: someone poking around so close to my face, touching my eyes, putting in various colored drops, anesthetics, washes, and such.

After several months of these tests and return visits, I became only the slightest bit accustomed to machines touching my cornea, measuring my optic nerve, and puffing for pressure, and brilliant lights to see into my eyeball.

One doctor said it perfectly: "I know this is torture, but you are a good patient. And at least it only needs to be done a couple of times a year."

It seems that when we go through medical procedures, there can be a self-absorption with our "presenting condition" and how the results of these tests might affect our future lives. It's sort of an underlying mantra that never stops: My life, my life, my life. How will my life change? What will I need to do differently? Can I handle the changes? And on it goes.

My point to all of this is that amid all of the self-indulgence of my emotional state, I was privileged to witness people with actual serious problems that made mine appear so minuscule in comparison. It's an odd way to find gratitude, if I do say so myself.

Visiting eye hospitals can be a jarring experience. There are those with gauze patches over their eyes, or those who would wish to stare out from orbs that no longer function.

One afternoon, with hugely dilated eyes, I was waiting for my taxi to arrive and take me back to my expat town of Chapala, Mexico, from Guadalajara. A woman, perhaps 35 years old with her husband carrying her bag and her daughter holding on to her arm, all passed by me going out the office doors. Her right eye, along with that side of her face and down her neck, was scarred, it seemed, from a grease fire. Locals here make carnitas -- delicious pieces of pork deep-fried in vats of oil -- and although I was guessing, it seemed that there had been a bubble in the oil and she had been caught in the explosion of that grease bubble.

Her eye had been the victim of that event. She and her family were gracious and warmly human as they walked out the door and onto the street.

I said a silent prayer.

On my most current visit to the eye clinic, as I was waiting in the office to discuss the results of tests I just had, a woman was helped into her seat beside me. The assistant checked with her to be sure she was settled in and that all was OK before he left her there to wait.

And wait we did.

However, this woman began a conversation with me, and again I was struck with how big my ego had been all through this process. I can still see, I can read, I can operate on my own, I reminded myself.

Georgia had had a stroke behind her eyes two months earlier, and while the rest of her body worked well and she felt no pain, she woke up to almost full blindness. Her right eye was lost, and she had a quarter of her vision gone from her left.

"At 81 years of age you learn to take things in stride," she assured me. "As things are going, I'll probably be fully blind soon."

Georgia has a housekeeper and a private driver to take her places, and she still bakes -- something she loves to do "recreationally," she says.

I was absolutely taken with her equanimity. Subdued, actually.

She was feeling warm in the airless office we found ourselves in, and I fanned both of us with a cardboard folder in which the results of my tests were stored.

We chatted, but I found another place in me that felt utterly speechless.

Once more, it's an odd way to discover gratitude in the midst of seemingly horrific events. But I am so very grateful that my hand is still useful and that I have eyes that continue to offer me vision of the world on our travels.

Perhaps there are challenging situations in your life where you can find the gift of gratitude as well. Why not use your eyes and take a look?